Twenty-Three

All three of them sat around the small table as Benny tapped a bare finger on the cover of his own notebook. His brow was crinkled even further than normal as he thought through what he wanted to say. Kon kept his tongue still, waiting for Benny to finish thinking. Diur had her own head buried in a holopad, scrolling through thick amounts of tiny script that Kon didn't recognize.

"As much as I hate to say it, you're a melee fighter at heart. That's not to say I will relent on your training with ranged weapons, but that's who you are. A brute fighter that wins by just being bigger, meaner, and stronger than everything they meet," Benny said. Kon opened his mouth to object but then shrugged.

"Don't shrug. This is about you, correct me if I'm wrong," Benny said gently.

"I'm not a brute. I fight close because that's what I know, it's how I was trained. I cleared my first rift with a rock afterall. My runes are meant to keep me fighting longer, harder, constantly strengthening me," Kon said.

"It is a strange first network," Benny said, tapping his finger against his lips. Kon stopped and even Diur lifted her head to look at him.

"What do you mean?" Kon asked.

"Generally the first network doesn't have any type of body modifications to it. It's mental and neural increases or gathering and storage runes. Knights fight with their armor for a reason, it increases our strength. It's more efficient to use runes to increase intangible things like mental processing, reaction speeds, or amongst the more aggressive schools of thought, having runes meant for projection."

"Alice had one like that, a fire rune she used to start fires," Kon said. Benny nodded along for a moment as he opened his book and flipped through pages before pointing to one.

"Fire is a rune fragment that can be found in the combustion full rune. Its common early rune fragment used as a self-defense rune," Benny explained.

"What would you suggest for me since Alice has already started me on this path?" Kon said.

"You need one, maybe two, runes left before they become detrimental and need to be capped. I have an idea for the full rune for you, but here's what I would suggest," Benny started before stopping and looking over toward Diur and sighed.

"I almost forgot about the body cultivation. What does your text say?" Benny asked.

"It matters if Kon moves forward as being a frontline fighter. Now that he is balanced and purified, he needs to move toward a basic affinity. This will not be a path he will be able to complete, I think. The amount of energy needed to complete the next step increases more and more," Diur began to explain.

"So you're both waiting on me to figure out how I want to progress?" Kon asked.

"Yes," Diur said while Benny merely nodded. Kon leaned back against the chair and thought about it.

"Do I actually like fighting like this, or is this just what I'm familiar with?" The thought plagued him, dancing around the back of his head as he drummed his fingers against the table, looking over his friend and mentor as he thought.

"I want to commit to this. Close quarters fighting," Kon said as he finally decided. There was nothing wrong with how Benny fought, how he thought through everything, but it didn't feel right. It was safer and likely smarter, but something about it grated against his being.

"Then my suggestion will be the react rune," Benny said, flipping a page to point at a sunburst on the paper.

"If your runes will empower you to be stronger, then I would suggest a body cultivation path that enforces you and toughens you. Earth or one of its subsets," Diur said. She clicked a series of buttons and new information flashed onto the screen.

"Metal body would be good. Steel or iron if we can find it," Diur said.

"Then your runes will reflect increasing strength, speed, and attacking power. I have some of the old documents lying around about how the original mages first fought. They might work for you," Benny said, light flaring to life behind his eyes.

"Mages? Not Knights?" Kon asked. Benny looked at him and smiled widely.

"The first warriors against the rifts, those who discovered runes but didn't learn how to implant them. Girl, keep this to ourselves," Benny said off-handedly as he warmed up to the subject. His hand dove back into empty space and pulled out an even older book, one that seemed to be held together out of spite more than anything.

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"When the rifts first arrived and we reacted to it, we sent explorers in. We found the runes, very similar to how you did. It took time, but those first explorers had an intuitive leap when they saw the runes. Maybe it was the introduction of rift energy to their systems, I don't know and I doubt they did either. But they were able to figure it out, they could project them. Or something similar to what we call projection," Benny said.

He opened the old book carefully, fingers gentle as he traced nearly faded black lettering across yellowed pages. Turning it again and again as he fell silent, his eyes racing across the words.

"Yes, here it is. They harvested the cores and channeled their power through them, casting the runes without implanting them." Sadness filled the old man's eyes as he kept reading.

"It killed them. Slowly, but they still did it. To hold back increasingly strong foes they continued to channel monster cores through themselves to cast."

"Killed them? And you want me to do it?" Kon asked as he felt his eyebrows raising. Benny gently closed the book and pushed it back into empty space, letting it disappear.

"It killed them since their bodies weren't tempered. Slowly cooking them. You're going to have a body cultivation methodology along with Knight runes. I think you could safely cast like they could. The original mages," Benny said.

"Forgive me, but I don't see the importance of this or how it would so greatly increase his strength beyond what he already has," Diur said.

"A Knight can only hold so many runes. No matter how strong you grow, how well your body can hold energy, there's a certain point that you're full. Only so many fragments and full runes can be held and every person is different. That means every Knight only has so many runes they could project. A mage doesn't have that weakness. Any rune can be cast, with as many variations and understandings as they can wrap their minds around."

"Except they cook themselves," Kon said.

"You won't cook. You're already tempered. Well, maybe it'll just be cooking slower," Benny admitted leaning back.

"That's very reassuring," Kon muttered, but his mind was betraying him as he thought of his personal holo that was filled with dozens of runes. If he could have the possibility of using them all, he couldn't imagine that power.

"My people know these runes," Diur said, pointing a finger at the book sitting in front of Benny.

"We use them in our arrays, but never once has anyone done something like this casting that you speak of. How is it that you can do this but no one else can?" Diur asked. Benny hummed as he sat back, his eyes glazing over as he started to think.

"Has anyone tried?" Benny asked.

"Why would we have not?" Diur said.

"You've always cultivated and used your techniques to shape the energy you gather inside of yourselves. Why would someone waste that gathered energy by trying to use the runes outside of themselves. They already get the results either through techniques or arrays."

Diur sat there, crossing her arms as she stared at him with disbelief written across her features.

"Are you saying that this, mage craft, has never been explored by the wider galaxy because we have always been cultivators?"

"Doesn't have to be. It also causes people to die. Horrible, horrible deaths. Knights can't cast like this, it burns them. Maybe, and again maybe, this will work since Kon has both sides. He's inundated with energy and has runes inside of him further strengthening him. Anyways, that's far in the future. Right now, we need to focus on what to implant."

"React," Kon said, pointing toward the rune that Benny had already shown him. Benny nodded and cleared his throat, slipping back into his teaching voice.

"A reaction has several parts. Stimuli, which you already have covered with your sensory rune, then there's your brain interpreting it, sending the message to react to your muscles, and then you react. Roughly," Benny said. Kon nodded along as Benny grabbed a piece of paper from the air and quickly drew the rune with perfect penmanship, passing it over to Kon.

"The best bet will be something like, I react quick, or something like that, and then putting it on your brain," Benny said. Kon nodded, looking over the rune as he started turning the words over in his head as he tried to figure out which words felt right.

"I react fast? React quickly? To react faster?" Kon's mind swirled with thoughts as he sat there but Diur quickly interrupted him.

"In the meantime, before you build your first full-rune, we will need to secure some treasures. We will not be doing the same methodology as last time. There will be proper baths, healing tinctures, and everything else needed to properly align you body with the treasures we find," Diur said.

"She's right. Which means finding an alchemist or something similar who will do the work without question," Benny said. Diur shot him a look as a frown crossed her face.

"What?" Kon asked as the two of them were locked in a staring contest.

"Every sect or clan will ask questions. Those in good standing at least," Diur said. Benny just nodded again.

"That leads us to sects or clans not in good standing?" Kon asked, looking between the two of them.

"Herectical sects or those who practice more…twisted, methods of cultivation," Diur hissed with venom in her voice.

"Most of them are like that. But there are those who have also been banished for poor political plays or the survivors of battles long past. I know just the place we can go once we have the ingredients necessary to facilitate his change. They probably won't try to harvest you kids," Benny said. Kon looked at the old man, waiting to see if he'd crack and offer a smile to soften the words.

He didn't.

"First thing first, I'm going to get this rune embedded. Then we can worry about the next one and finding the right ingredients to turn my body steel or whatever," Kon said as he slid out of the chair, keeping the rune in his hand as he headed back to his bedroom.

"React fast." The words stuck in his head as he stared at the paper in his hand. That could work.

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